I’ll get England marching again
The Golden Age is over but we can win silver
HE looked relaxed, at ease with himself and his new role. But Gareth Southgate’s message was one of cold, hard realism.
Just as Southgate was presented to the world as England’s new manager at Wembley yesterday morning, FIFPro, the international federation of professional footballers, announced their list of candidates to make up the world’s best team in 2016.
And there was just one Englishman among the 55 names to choose from: Jamie Vardy.
As a damning indictment of the current state of English football, and more importantly an indicator of the massive job Southgate has to do to make England competitive on the world stage, the document could not have been more brutal.
But Southgate, the ink barely dry on his £1.8million-a-year four-year deal, having come through an unbeaten four-game trial period before being named as Sam Allardyce’s successor, is ready for the challenge.
There is no Golden Generation, he said, as there supposedly was at the 2002 World Cup, Euro 2004 and the 2006 World Cup, all of which ended in disappointment. No David Beckham, no Frank Lampard, no Steven Gerrard, no Rio Ferdinand. England start from scratch. “What would success be in Russia in the 2018 World Cup?” mused Southgate.
“Ultimately you go to win, but we are now recognising the landscape we are dealing with. The starting point. We have got to keep improving.
“I’d love to sit here and dress it up, and as a coach you always have to be positive, but it gives you an understanding of that starting point. I like what I see in terms of potential. I saw enough in the last two matches, especially against Spain, but there are clearly areas where we have to get better.
“As a group of players, maybe collectively a bit of humility won’t be a bad thing; to say this is where we are at, but what is achievable, and let’s have a go at it.
“You can’t fast-track everything. A team has to go through a process, as Spain did, and Germany, where they were getting all of a sudden to quarter-finals, then semi-finals.
“It’s like teams that win leagues. They generally go close a couple of times before they get over the line because they have to go through that.
“Hopefully this squad will have recognised why we didn’t
get there last summer, and can make sure that does not happen again, that we progress.
“In the next few years, we have players who have the potential to get onto that FIFPro list. But that’s the challenge. That is the reality of the task at the moment.
“Now it’s about how we take the team forward. What I see is a desire to improve, and high potential. They are going to experience that with us and with their clubs.
“It is a few years since we’ve had this many English players playing in the Champions League, so they will benefit from that. We are looking at the long term as well as the short term. We always have that optimism going into a tournament but my big concern before the summer was the lack of big-match experience of a lot of the players. It is not a squad like we had in 2004 and 2006 where we had boys who had won the Champions League. That’s experience that is going to have to come over time.”
Southgate is adamant there is no mental block about tournament football among England players, despite recent dismal performances.
“It is playing in pressure matches,” he said. “Of course in tournaments, every game becomes pressure.
“I wouldn’t just say it is tournaments. Maybe a few tournaments ago we were talking about the wrong atmosphere, the wrong location, that being away from home was a problem. But logistically this organisation have got that right, the environment for the players to have the right moments to switch off.
“But the key is on the field – being able to perform in those moments, against top opposition.” The highly articulate, wellspoken Southgate had laid out the harsh facts. His mighty task now is to change that landscape.
There is just one player in world’s top 55 – Vardy